SEATTLE -- Police commanders from Lakewood, Wash.; Oakland, Calif.; and Seattle attending a national conference in Seattle on Thursday described the huge emotional toll on their departments after officers were slain in the line of duty.
"March 21 (2009) was our version of 9-11," Oakland Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said, referring to when a parolee took the lives of four Oakland officers. The department later lost 11 officers to disability leave with psychological problems and one officer to suicide as a result, he said.
In the aftermath, the department offered to double up officers in patrol cars, reinforced training and reassured police of their vital role.
After Seattle Officer Timothy Brenton was fatally ambushed in his patrol car with a trainee on Oct. 31, 2009, relatives of other officers urged them to change careers.
"There was a lot of fear from families and pressure to leave the job," Seattle Deputy Chief Nick Metz said. His daughter asked him, "Why do you have to wear that uniform?"
The Seattle shooting, soon followed by the Nov. 29, 2009, killings of four Lakewood officers while doing paperwork in a suburban Tacoma coffee shop, had an especially heavy impact on the relatively young Seattle force.
Seattle has hired more than 450 officers in the past five years. Many stopped writing reports in their cars or coffee shops, instead working at their stations.
"Since then, it's been a challenge to reinforce our beliefs that they have to engage the community," Seattle Assistant Chief Jim Pugel said.
In the first four months this year, 65 officers have been killed nationwide, up from 51 this time last year. Of the 65 officers, 32 were killed by gunfire; 24 in an ambush or unprovoked manner; seven while serving arrest warrants; and nine while working on a multiagency task force.
The Washington, D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum drew big-city supervisors to its annual meeting in Seattle to discuss recent cases, the effects and possible responses.
"There's definitely something that's happening in the U.S. that's really putting our officers at risk,'" said Joshua Ederheimer, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Justice's COPS office.
The Lakewood and Oakland shooters had criminal records, but the Seattle cop killer was well-educated with no criminal past.
"I would suggest what's common to them is severe mental illness," said Robert Lehner, who left as Eugene police chief in 2008 to serve as chief in Elk Grove, Calif., near Sacramento.
"We're not doing the mentally ill a service by leaving them free and unencumbered on our streets without treatment and observation," Lehner said. He noted he would leave the convention today to attend the memorial for Eugene Officer Chris Kilcullen, fatally shot in an attempted traffic stop.
The police commanders emphasized the need to study and learn from the shootings. Oakland police called in an independent "board of inquiry," which identified tactical mistakes.
Two Oakland motorcycle officers were shot as they walked up together on the driver's side of a stopped vehicle. Their approach made them "two easy targets," Jordan said.
Police then entered an apartment where the suspect was located without adequate "command and control," or intelligence gathering, Jordan added. "Eight officers of the SWAT team went through the door; six of them came out alive."
Now, Oakland police give presentations to other agencies on their "lessons learned," Jordan said.
Commanding officers from the stricken agencies all said the outpouring of community support and appreciation for police was remarkable.
That's why Lakewood Police Chief Brett Farrar called the day he lost four officers "the most devastating and most inspiring time in my career." The community contributed almost $3 million that police put into a trust fund, he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice plans to help fund a center for the study of violence against police and assemble a national working group on officer safety, said Ederheimer, of the COPS office.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance also plans to withhold body armor funding to agencies that don't require officers to wear their bullet-resistant vests at all times on duty. About 41 percent of agencies don't have that requirement. (Portland police do.)
Despite increasing challenges, the police commanders agreed they can't back down from their prime responsibility to keep the public safe.
"It's a tough job and it's dangerous sometimes" Lakewood's Farrar said, " but you can't fold up your tent and quit."
